Bloggers in the News

2004: The Year Bloggers Shed their Skins

Megan Beckwith of Fourcast

2004: Big Year for Blogs - PC World

Bloggers beat wires in Asian disaster - The Inquirer, UK

Bloggers beat conventional media - Times of India, India

ABC's 'People of the Year' - Bloggers - Slashdot

Bloggers rise to the occasion - The Hindu, India

Pew study: Blogs busted out in 2004 - The Industry Standard

Study: Blog creation, readership jumped in 2004 - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Tantalizing informative reflective blogs - Earthtimes.org

Technology Speeds Flow Of Information, Aid For Tsunami Catastrophe - Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic

BlogAid Pledge To Support The Asia Disaster - WebProNews

In time of disaster, bloggers make their mark - Taipei Times, Taiwan

Bloggers fill the void - The Malaysia Star, Malaysia

Presenting...Philoblogger: The Blogging Philosopher

Please welcome to the blogosphere a philosopher of great worth and radiant youth. Philoblogger may well be the world's sexiest philosopher. But don't just ask me. Ask his mother, my sister...who only days ago got to see her philosopher secure his paper, upon which were writ the words, magna cum laude, Philosophy, and University of North Carolina, the whole of which was most pleasing to attending kin, who ululated in shapenotes as young Robert, the Philoblogger, graced the stage with his glowing radiance praeternaturale.

I have invited Gaston le Philoblogger to be a guest columnist, and hope he can do some travel writing, music, film, and book reviews. As Naisbett predicted, the 21st century would become so complex that philosophers would be in great need in order to sort things out. We want to pick the Philoblogger's mind, particularly in regard to the current megaproblems.

We also want to interview The Philoblogger over on The Interview Blog, where, among other things, we are working on a GBI, or Generic Blogger Interview, which we hope our blogging friends will, when complete, answer the damn questions thus providing Humanity with the damn answers.

Please welcome him with your charm and wit.

The Irony of War

I read the news today, oh boy!

---

In the garden is no ear

Anonymoses Hyperlincoln

12.30.04

With the left hand we hurl millions to fund the healing,
With the right hand we hurl billions to fund the killing.
The earth rocks in the cradle,
the inbalancing cradle.

Oil-drunk hawks do everything to heat up the earth,
facilitate its end...
Hiroshimized by water.

Global warmers see their fruit
layed out on beaches
set to flame by loved ones

then cheer as numbers rack up,
rack up in Iraq.

How hot is a MOAB?
Will Nature counter by bombing us
with ice?

Why do I fear
this is only just the beginning?

So soft and peaceful here.
In the garden is no ear

to hear the cries

of a billion

suffering

souls.

---

May the victims of this tragedy, and their friends and families, find peace, strength, patience, solace, wisdom and magnanimous love and charity. And may we, in our gardens, vow to make their suffering meaningful. This could literally be a watershed moment in world history. We can say no to War for all time, and say yes to helping people live better, more peaceful lives.

In the magnanimous outpouring from around the world, we see, as we knew we would see, that everyone has a heart. We are all better off, and we feel better about ourselves, and indeed are intrinsically better, when we act upon our higher natures.

But the suffering this time is so vast, and will certainly get much worse. By showing them that their suffering, and our response to their suffering, will make for a positive change in the way the world's people relate to one another, and that, indeed, we can set ourselves on such a corrective course...who knows? Maybe it can help alleviate some of the pain.

God help us all.

An anti-war Conservative speaks out

'Staying the Course' Won't Do
by Patrick J. Buchanan

[excerpts from AntiWar.com]
In the aftermath of the suicide bombing of the Mosul mess hall, we are being admonished anew we must stay the course in Iraq. But "Stay the course!" is no longer enough.

President Bush needs to go on national television and tell us the unvarnished truth. Why are we still there? For some of Bush's countrymen, there is a sense of having been had, of having been made victim to one of the great bait-and-switches in the history of warfare.

The president, his War Cabinet, and the neocon punditocracy sold us on this war by implying Saddam was implicated in 9/11, that he had a vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, that he was working on an atom bomb, that he would transfer his terror weapons to al-Qaeda. We had to invade, destroy, and disarm his axis-of-evil regime. Only thus could we be secure.

None of this was true. But the president won that debate and was given a free hand to invade Iraq. He did so, and overthrew Saddam's regime in three weeks. "Mission Accomplished!"

That was 20 months ago. What is our mission now? When did it change? With 1,300 dead and nearly 10,000 wounded, why are we still at war with these people?

The president says the enemy is "terrorism" and "evil," and we fight for "democracy" and that "freedom" that is "God's gift to humanity." All very noble.

But why should Americans have to die for democracy in a nation that has never known it? Democracy in the Middle East is not vital to our national security. For though the Middle East has never been democratic, no Middle East nation has ever attacked us. And should we catch a nation that is supporting terror against us, we have the weapons to make them pay a hellish price, without invading and occupying their country.

The only nation in the 20th century to attack us was Japan. And Japan lashed out, insanely, in desperation, because we had cut off her oil and convinced the British and Dutch to cut off the vital commodities she needed to avoid imperial defeat in China. We were choking the Japanese empire to death.

We might all prefer that Arab nations be democratic. But that is not vital to us. If they remain despotic, that is their problem, so long as they do not threaten or attack us. But to invade an Islamic country to force it to adopt democratic reforms is democratic imperialism. If we practice it, we must expect that some of those we are reforming will resort to the time-honored weapon of anti-imperialists, terrorism – the one effective weapon the weak have against the strong.

...

Before addressing his countrymen, the president needs to ask and answer for himself some hard questions. Who told him this would be a "cakewalk"? Who misled him to believe we would be welcomed as liberators with bouquets of flowers? Who led him into a situation where his choice appears to be between a seemingly endless guerrilla war that could destroy his presidency, and walking away from Iraq and watching it collapse in mayhem and the massacre of those who cast their lot with us? Why have these fools not been fired, like the CIA geniuses who sold JFK on the Bay of Pigs?

It is not just President Bush who is in this hellish mess. We're all in it together. But the president needs to know that if he intends to use U.S. military power to democratize the Middle East, Americans – 56 percent of whom now believe Iraq was a mistake – will not follow him.

Finally, the president must answer in his heart this question: Exactly how much more blood and money is he willing to plunge into a war for democracy in Iraq, and at what point must he decide – as LBJ and Nixon did in Vietnam – that the cost to America is so great that we must get out and risk the awful consequences of a mistaken war that we should never have launched?

(Thanks to Rob Urban for referring me to this article.)

Der Spiegel: "Bloggers at Front Line of Relief Efforts"

[excerpt]
If you want to find out more information about this week's tsunami of biblical proportions in Southeast Asia and how you can help the victims, the best place to go is a new blog in the Indian Ocean region that's compiling everything from requests by organizations seeking donations to victim lists.
Blogs are at the forefront of the tsunami recovery effort. While traditional media drags awaiting publication, and government hotlines jam or go unanswered, bloggers have hopped into the fray, providing needed information to relatives desperate to find loved ones and those hoping to join the rescue efforts. One of the best sites out there is the South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog set up by students from New Delhi, a Sri Lankan TV producer and Internet junkies in the region. It offers everything from fascinating tsunami facts to emergency contact numbers to humanitarian relief organizations. Plus it tells you how to donate money from wherever you are.

(via Glenn Reynolds)

Deadliest Tsunami in History

D A T E - L O C A T I O N - D E A D
2004, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, etc. 150,000+ w/millions suffering today
1883, Krakatoa, Indonesia 36,000
1707 Japan Up to 30,000
1896, Sanriku, Japan 27,000
1755, Lisbon, Portugal 10,000
1933, Sanriku, Japan 3,000
1960, Hilo, Hawaii, and Pacific Islands Over 450
1979, San Juan, Colombia Over 250
1946, Hawaii 173

Learn more about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake & tsunamis - from Wikipedia

[excerpt]
The 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake of moment magnitude 9.0 that struck the Indian Ocean off the western coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia on December 26, 2004 at 00:58:53 UTC (07:58:53 local time in Jakarta and Bangkok). It was the largest earthquake on Earth since the 9.2-magnitude Good Friday Earthquake which struck Alaska on March 27, 1964, and the fourth largest since 1900 (tied with a 1952 earthquake of 9.0 magnitude in Kamchatka). Tens of thousands were killed by tsunamis of heights of up to 15 m, which flooded coastlines between 15 minutes and 10 hours after the quake, causing one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern history.
The multiple tsunamis struck and ravaged coastal regions all over the Indian Ocean, devastating parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and other countries. Deadly tsunamis struck as far away as Somalia and several other countries on the east coast of Africa, 4,500 km (2,800 mi) or more west of the epicentre. Global ripple effects were so widespread that wave fluctuations passed into the Pacific Ocean and caused tidal disturbances in North and South America.
The plight of the affected people and countries prompted a widespread humanitarian response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

Billionaires, cough it up!

Tat tvam asi...

I am not even a billionaire, and yet I somehow feel empowered to tell each and every one of them to cough it up. Helping victims of tragedy is a growth industry which has suddenly been exponentiated by the forces of Nature, and is likely to occur again and again and again. Some day Nature may find you, and no wall of money will keep you afloat. This is perhaps the worst tragedy in human history. And it has only just begun. Where is your blank check? Your infinite credit line? Want to be a hero and not just inclusionary? Looking for an opportunity to extend noblesse oblige? Sure, the less fortunate can, and are being philanthropic. But time is key. This is your chance to evolve your true worth.

Cough it up. Give it all away. Do something human.


Relief and information links can be found in wondrous abundance at Iddybud, American Street, The Southeast Asia Earthquake and Tsunami site, Emergency Action Blog, and others.

Only a millionaire? You can make yourselves useful too. Give what you can.
...
Iddybud sent this article on one way to give:
North Carolina Philanthropists are coughing it up...
An emerging philanthropic trend: the 'giving circle'

The Blogs & Music that Healed the World

We are living in Kuhnian times. Revolutions are happening by the hour. Blogpolitics is already ancient history, even while having a much greater future. Now blogs are tying together newspapers, artists, musicians and such that can and should be marshalled to create, very rapidly, a vast amount of financial and informational relief.

Newspapers can give free advertising for a Tsunami Aid concert, featuring local, national and world acts, which is then carried over blogs, with links for charitable giving. In exchange, the blogs can carry an ad for the newspaper, bla bla bla. Work it out. It's for a good cause. And an urgent one at that.

Tsunami, Blogs and The Philanthropic Class

Towards a Poor Theatre

TSUNAMI

These seem like end-times. The eschaton. Amerigeddon. There are locusts in Egypt, trihurricanes, megaquakes, floods, brothers killing brothers, death on a mass scale.
Howard Zinn and others have suggested that America become a "humanitarian superpower", and what better time than the present? The big natural event that could unite all people...has occurred. Are we mobilizing? Are we going above and beyond the proverbial call of duty? Or are we giving lip-service, and tossing out a few painless dollars?

And what are "painless dollars"?

PAINLESS DOLLARS

In order to support my life of heady leisure, I sometimes do work for a well-to-do family here in town. Some of it is painless, but some of it is quite painful. It is impossible that my pay causes any pain whatsoever to the payer, and the other day, I was ruminating on how it would be if people exchanged pain for pain. Pay 'til it hurts. In equal degree. Wouldn't that be nice! So 10k for a day's work makes you cringe? Well carry these barbells to the attic, and then let's talk.

My New Year's wish is that people start considering such matters, and, at least occasionally, act on it.

THE PHILANTHROPIC CLASS

Speaking of pain...I have noticed that, in America, the truly philanthropic class, as strange as it sounds, are the poor. The poor will give their entire fortune that another may live, and then trust that they will somehow get along without it. Who, in the upper stratophere even gives 'til it hurts? No one, that's who!

I am reminded of the story of Indra and the Ants. The ants will be king, and the king will be an ant. What is full empties, and what is empty gets filled.

But who lives like this...other than the poor?

MICROPHILANTHROPIES

It is good to give. Brings good karma. And many poor folks would like to be able to help when others suffer much greater tragedies, such as in the case of tsunami. And yet, there may not be an easy way for them to participate in global relief. This is where microphilanthropies come to the rescue. Who knows? The totals may well exceed that given by those with means. Recall Dean and MoveOn, and how they were able to generate massive funds for good causes...a dollar here and a dollar there.

BLOGS

BlogAid. As I said after the election loss: Just because we lost, doesn't mean we cannot still do things. Well, here's something to do...and fashion it after a flashmob, or Ed Cone's instaconference. Time is of the essence.

An enterprising blogger can create a portal for bloggers and non-Bs to... give 'til it hurts. Maybe even have a quick tutorial on Paypal, or some other useful e-payment system. Networks, such as the Street can tie in with ProgBlogs and other groups and networks.

If ever there were a place where bloggers are needed...it is in the heart of the inundation. Cannot a flashmob of sorts convene at ground zero and offer their blog up for bulletins?

Will someone create an aggregator for ground zero blogs?

GROUND ZERO BLOG AGGREGATOR

We need one.

Some places to give.

(Originally published on The American Street)

UPDATE

Kevin Hayden of American Street popped me a note, and shared these links where you can help:
Regarding several things Dave's written recently...

On Giving:

There are several groups already underway.

BloggerCorps
An explanation: http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2004/12/bloggercorps_ha.html
The site:
http://www.bloggercorps.org/

I'm at a fledgling level of involvement here. Because of the tsunami, we've discussed setting up a blog (temporarily titled Emergency Action Blog) which will be set up for emergencies across the globe. A crisis in your country? (Or state?) We'd quickly set up an aggregate newsfeed using media sources in the the area, blogroll any agencies and relief organizations working the area, and let people from the area blog about what's going on and what's needed. With the bandwidth to meet the demand.

(More at bottom of this list)

Global Voices Online
Draft Manifesto
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/wiki/index.php/Global_Voices_Draft_Manifesto
Site:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/


CivicSpace Labs
A continuation of the Dean-motivated technology build. It seems to be more a platform than an activist group, but it has sponsored I Do and a couple of others:
I Do: http://www.idoin30seconds.org/
CivicSpace: http://www.civicspacelabs.org/

Strengthen The Good
An unusual one, its interests can only be described as eclectic, as they find local micro-causes around the world, advertise it on their blogs and raise funds for them. Among some I've seen: one that raised money to pay funeral expenses for child murder victims, books for schoolkids in the Czech Republic, etc.

Many of its members are Righty bloggers, so it may be a good way to fraternize and develop dialogues. I joined this last summer but have never followed through (The election took too much effort)
http://www.strengthenthegood.com/
Alan Nelson of Command Post set it up.

Project Apollonia
Provides grade school level books to Costa Rican schoolkids.
http://www.projectapollonia.org/

Omidyar Network
Don't know much about this but they have an impressive list of partners
http://www.omidyar.net/


Bottom of This List
No group by this title, but it circles back to BloggerCorps, because I think several of the same folks are involved in the two below:

Worldchanging.com
About: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/000106.html
Site: http://www.worldchanging.com/
They apparently helped set up the Tsunami blog
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/001821.html
The Tsunami Blog: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/

Emergency Action Blog
As noted in the first entry, this is the project that got underway in the past 48 hours. It'll be designed to handle future relief coordination activities, within a few hours of an arising need. Worldchanging, BloggerCorps members - and me - are involved in this. And there's a mailing list.
http://eab.smartcampaigns.com/

Individuals involved: Besides Rebecca MacKinnon, others include the following, but there are more on the email list, so this isn't all-inclusive.

Nick Lewis of the Progressive Blog Alliance is heavily involved, and likely is a better source of info (he has tech skills to match his aims; I do not.)
Nick: http://nicklewis.smartcampaigns.com/
PBA: http://pbahq.smartcampaigns.com/

I also suspect it was a comment I left on his blog that got me onto a mailing list about all this stuff. So if you're interested in any of it, he's the person to approach.


Other people involved (some real heavyweights)

Joi Ito http://joi.ito.com/

Aldon Hynes http://aldon.livejournal.com/ and http://www.orient-lodge.com/
and bio: http://www.orient-lodge.com/index.php?q=node/view/8

Jon Lebkowsky
bio: http://www.weblogsky.com/about.html
site: http://weblogsky.com/

Ah, the promise of technology!
http://www.munnecke.com/blog/archives/2004_11.html#000201

Anonymoses welcomes The Solar Bus and PeaceBike

Gary Beckwith's Solar Bus

Tad Beckwith's PeaceBike
About PeaceBike

Marshes of the Cradle

Paradise Lost?
What should--or can--be done about "the environmental crime of the century"?
by Christopher Reed
(from Harvard Magazine)

Five thousand years ago in the Mesopotamian marshes, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in southern Iraq, the Sumerians began history. They devised an irrigation system and built an agrarian society, banding together the children of hunter-gatherers in the world's first cities—Ur, Uruk, Eridu, Lagash, Larsa—on the edge of the marshes. From their cradle of civilization, the Sumerians brought forth writing (as well as the wheel, maybe, and much else fundamental) and carved into clay tablets the epic of Gilgamesh, which describes the Flood. Here, many say, was the Garden of Eden (although the latest scientific thinking suggests it was at a spot now at the bottom of the Persian Gulf).
MORE

Desperate Housewife, Nicolette Sheridan, sheds towel & inhibitions for Football star

Sheridan and Owens with jungle fever

Not to be bested by Janet Jackson or Lindy England, Nicky Sheridan corners the football star in a locker room, and races naked into his arms...on national TV!

FOX: A False Balance

"A false balance is an abomination to the Lord." - Proverbs, 11:1

And to those who are always preaching Armageddon, the Bible says this:

"A man of understanding sets his face toward wisdom,
but the eyes of the fool are on the ends of the earth." - Proverbs, 17:24

Welcome Woody to the blogosphere

Please welcome my old friend, Woody Williams, to the blogosphere. He is an extraordinary artist and composer, and has been for decades. He is available for concert and DJ venues. Here is where you can find him.


This is the Info Page, which has links to the History of Electronic Music and other edifying phenomena.

Charlotte: Hitched to Everything

A great blog from Charlotte with a message for the season...

(well, actually Stribley is aboriginally from Perth, Australia)
[EXCERPT from Hitched to Everything, by Robert Stribley}
As I read it, that poem ties in with the implicit theme of this blog--or at least the name, I've chosen--which I've never taken the time to elaborate on. John Muir was likely referring specifically to nature when he said it: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." But I intend the theme to be even broader: philosophically, religiously, naturally, universally.

However you want to read it, we're all hitched together. Democrats and Republicans, hippies and hipsters, men and women, believers and non-believers, businessmen and homeless people, single mothers and Baptist deacons, Americans and Frenchmen, Westerners and Middle Easterners, gays and straights, Yuschenko and Yanukovych, flower arrangers and day traders, dogs and cats, the PHD candidate and the unschooled, bullies and submissives, the fashionable and the frump, priests and petty criminals, the married and the single, movie stars and children in their school play, introverts and extroverts, elephants and insects, the poet and the illiterate, black and white, gym bunnies and couch potatoes, the eldery and the newborn, North Koreans and South Koreans, congressmen and trial lawyers, the loved and the unloved, Protestants and Catholics, dullards and debutantes, Muslims and Christians, pacifists and terrorists. No, they are not all the same, but they are all hitched together.

Like it or not, believe it or not. It's true. It's sometimes a thing of horror, but it's always a thing of beauty.

I often have to remind myself that it's true. But maybe that's what's worth remembering during this season.

A welcome message indeed!

Susan Crawford picks up on the Greensboro Phenomenon

[EXCERPT]
Here's an idea: how about (in addition to replicating the paper online, which is a valuable resource) having an entirely different community site that is branded separately but relatedly. That might help management relax. Then aggregate blogs, hold forums, have polls, have very-local-weather reports, review movies, have the best possible community events calendar, create (simple, low-barrier-to-entry) virtual worlds, assign stories collectively, have photo contests, whatever. But in a slightly different voice.
One model I like is the Time Out New York offline setup. It's got the voice of an informal blog, with regular columnists, plus all possible information about all possible events. It's overwhelming, but I can imagine that the online Greensboro version might have a more manageable amount of information. Time Out Greensboro plus The Aggregated Voice of Greensboro -- with revenue coming only from large concerns placing listings. No subscriber fees or "premium" content that's hard to get to -- the friendly craigslist model.

about susan crawford

A Happy Holiday greeting

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!


This animated greeting was created by an old friend from Massachusetts, Tom Priest. Tom and I helped each other in the first days of the WWW, each showing the other new tricks and tools, and each inspiring (I hope) the other to keep with it. We both are still with it. Only he has actually evolved, whereas I backed my truck into a mudhole. :)
Feel free to drop him a note. May you all (both) have a wondrous holiday season.

-anonyMoses

Speaking of friends...

The holiday season always makes me think of friends new and old...

While reading Lenslinger' hurricane tales, I was reminded of Hurricane Hugo, and a couple of friends who had covered it, from Charleston...ground zero.

Roger Mellen covered it, as producer of a Charlotte TV News division, and Rob Urban covered it for the Charlotte Observer. Their reports were hair-raising and wondrous. I would not have wanted to do it.

Years later, Mr. Urban would be awakened by yours truly and told that the WTC had been it, and that he better get up. We were in Manhattan. Upper East. Nice place!
Just not that month.

And just like with Hugo, Rob raced toward the maelstrom.

The path from Hugo to 9/11 was also quite interesting. After leaving the observer, he and his lovely wife, Laura Zelenko, got on with Bloomberg and became bureau chiefs in Prague for a few years, and later Moscow for another few years. Stupidly I never visited...except to meet them in Amsterdam and Paris.

I hope to see them here today or tomorrow. Yay!!

I lost touch with Mr. Mellen sadly, mostly due to having fallen for a little lady, who absorbed my attention. But while we did hang out, he was a most gracious host, with marvelous music and quite a culinary gift. Patti Smith's "Dream of Life" remains a favorite.

Thanks to the Internets, I have been able to locate this maghificent gentleman, who is now Visiting Assistant Professor in Journalism and Coordinator of the Electronic Journalism at George Mason, and working on the PhD. Electronic Journalism. Hmm...
I wonder do he blog?

He is not unlike his picture.


Roger Mellen

Roger Mellen's website

Guess I'll have to pop him a note!

Your friends are your treasure

Graziella Patrucco de Solodow


"Your friends are your treasure", a good friend said to me the other day as we were talking about friends and my relative lack of material treasure. I could not agree more. One reason I love the internet is that you can locate old friends with whom you may have lost touch. Such is the case with the artist above. Back in the mid-'80s, Graziella was illustrating a children's book I was working on, while creating masterpieces for Caspari. She had to move to New Haven before we finished, but even to think now that she would do such a thing only reiterates the point my friend made earlier.

You can see some of her work here and here.

Treasure your friends over this holiday season. Treasure your treasure.

anonyMoses presents:

The letter "M".